


I swear I'd burn down the city (to show you the lights)

by stardustachilles



Series: Acosmist (one who believes nothing exists) [12]
Category: Dysprosium
Genre: Alex is 26, F/F, Sara is 19, They Make It Work, alex is busy, sara's stressed, this is basically just softcore bdsm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-02
Updated: 2017-03-02
Packaged: 2018-09-27 20:04:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10044329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardustachilles/pseuds/stardustachilles
Summary: Sara gets to Alex's house late, and she's exhausted.





	

Alex was sitting on her couch, watching TV and going over a rocket design that she had to approve for a new project. They were working with SpaceX, now, and even though no one outright said it, it was because they wanted Alex to consult on their project. She didn’t mean to brag, but she was a pretty big fish in the pond that was astrophysics.

James wasn’t here, which was odd, because he was always here. Something about his brother making bad decisions? She wasn’t sure, and she didn’t ask. James’s family was a little bit insane, and Alex didn’t like to get involved in it.

She wasn’t sure what was playing on the TV anymore. When she had turned it on, it had been old  _ X-Files _ reruns. Now it may have been some other show about aliens, because those were admittedly Alex’s guilty pleasure. She like the absurdity of it, because with her profession, she was able to substantiate some of the claims and disprove others. It was almost like a game show, but without all the obnoxious music and ugly people. (Alex hated game shows.)

But she had gotten absorbed in her work, which often happened, and now it was three hours later and her hips hurt, because she was sitting on her floor with her legs crossed and the three hundred page proposal on the coffee table in front of her. The fireplace below the TV was on, because it was kinda chilly and Alex had left the windows open all night.

Alex sat up and stretched. Reading this proposal was taking much longer than reading a book ever did, because she had to fact-check everything and check all the math. There was a lot of math. She could have finished a three hundred page book in this time, but she was only halfway through the proposal. Not to mention the calculator, mechanical pencil and stack of scratch paper beside her. Even if she could do the math mentally, she liked to write it down.

Alex grabbed the remote and flicked the TV off. It had been on a show called  _ Out of This World _ . She had done enough work for today. She had gotten up this morning at seven, like usual, worked out, showered, and started working. Most of her inbox had been proposals, but a good portion had been from wanna-be’s who made implausible claims and used Alex’s public email to try to get them substantiated. She didn’t answer those. A handful of them were from her actual employers, but a bunch of those were about meetings. It took a lot of filtering to get to her actual assignments. And that was without checking her actual mailbox, where she had found this proposal, a bunch of bills, and some invites to parties from people she didn’t know anymore.

Alex glanced at the clock. It was a little past seven, which meant she had been working for almost twelve hours. That’s why she got above-average pay. It also meant that Sara was half an hour late. Sara was hardly ever late, but she had her own life, so Alex didn’t get worried yet. One of her classes had probably run late, or she’d had more homework than anticipated.

Alex got up, stretching again, because she really was sore. She padded down the hallway to the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of sparkling water from the fridge. She popped off the cap and drank straight from the bottle, which James hated. She didn’t get why, because they had shared more DNA in their lives than Alex cared to consider. She’d had his dick in her mouth; he really shouldn’t be bothered by her drinking straight from the bottle.

(He always used the excuse that they’d been experimenting high schoolers and it didn’t count, but she didn’t buy it.)

Alex made herself dinner, a meal she often forgot to eat if James wasn’t here to remind her. She wasn’t good about any meals but breakfast, because it was part of her daily morning routine. After that, her days varied, and lunch and dinner fell through the cracks. James was usually here for the sole purpose of reminding her to take breaks.

He could be annoying, but she loved him.

Around fifteen minutes later, as Alex was putting her dishes in the dishwasher, she heard the front door open. It wasn’t too concerning, because a lot of her friends — or should she say acquaintances; she didn’t have many friends — showed up at her house at random times. Alex had been sort of the dad in both her high school and college friend groups, and they all knew that they had an open invitation to her house.

And if it was a thief, well, Alex was confident that she could defend herself. She’d done a fair amount of martial arts when she was younger, in addition to gymnastics, and ballet when she was littler. And now she had a reasonably intensive workout, to keep up her musculature.

Alex heard the front door close, and a bag being dropped and shoes being kicked off, then the double doors out of the entryway behind opened and not closed, and Alex assumed it was Sara. She kicked the dishwasher closed threw the towel over her shoulder onto the counter, and walked through the kitchen doorway, running straight into Sara.

Sara just buried her face in the juncture of Alex’s neck and shoulder, and despite being confused, Alex wrapped her arms around her. Sara sighed into Alex’s shoulder through her t-shirt. Alex slid a hand up to the back of Sara’s neck.

“What’s up?” she asked, trying not to make it sound to heavy. Sara seemed exhausted and a little bit angry, which was never good, because it took a lot to make Sara angry.

Sara sighed and Alex grabbed the backs of her thighs and hoisted her up like a child. Sara wrapped her legs around Alex’s waist and her arms around her neck and let herself be carried. Alex walked up the stairs to her room and went through the open door, dropping Sara on the edge of the bed. Sara was reluctant to let go, but she let Alex stand up and turn around to rifle through her dressers. She pulled off her (read: James’s) jeans and pulled on a pair of leggings, and for Sara she grabbed one of her sweatshirts, and a pair of sweatpants that Sara had left here a while ago. She grabbed fuzzy socks, too, as an afterthought, because Sara’s feet always got cold.

As she was helping Sara change, she asked, “What’s up?” again. Sara hadn’t answered the first time. She could tell Sara rolled her eyes even with her shirt covering her face.

“Nothing,” Sara said, and Alex waited, because this wasn’t nothing and she knew Sara was going to elaborate. “I just had a full day of classes and got home and started doing my homework, and apparently I missed dinner because my parents burst into my room a couple hours later yelling at me for missing dinner. I tried to tell them it was just because I had a lot of homework but they didn’t believe me. Then they accused me of having an eating disorder, because apparently I’ve been doing this a lot lately, and they wouldn’t believe me when I told them it  _ really  _ was just homework.”

Sara stood to let Alex change her pants, and continued. “I’m perfectly healthy,” she ranted. “Like, yeah, maybe I could be more athletic, but just because I’m skinny doesn’t mean I have an eating disorder. They are so melodramatic. So they started yelling and I accidentally yelled back, like I really didn’t mean to, but I had just been doing homework for four hours and I was tired, okay? And I really didn’t mean to storm out, either, but I grabbed my overnight bag that I had already packed and I just kinda left.”

Sara sighed, and sat back down on the bed. Alex was kneeling in front of her, pulling her socks on. “I dunno,” Sara mumbled. “Maybe it’s good that I’m not there. We’d probably just fight more and then they’d try to punish me, but I’m in college now and they can’t do that, can they?” Alex stayed silent, because she had no experience with punishment as a child or a young adult, and she didn’t want to say anything that would make Sara angrier.

“I dunno,” Sara said again. “I’m sorry. I’m just tired.” She slumped a little, and Alex kneeled up to catch her. “I’m sorry. I’ll behave better. I just wanted to be good. I’m just tired.”

Alex felt her heart pang, because she loved Sara and she didn’t like it when she was upset. She let Sara lay against her shoulder. “It’s okay,” she said. “You’ll go home and explain that to your parents, and they’ll forgive you. It’ll be okay.”

Sara nodded slowly against Alex’s shoulder. Her arms were hanging by her sides, so Alex grabbed her under the thighs again to scoot her farther back on the bed. Sara let herself be moved and kept her head tucked against Alex’s shoulder as much as possible. Alex rested Sara back against the wall, and her head lolled back, eyes half-lidded.

Alex sighs affectionately and moves up to kneel over Sara’s splayed legs. She cupped Sara’s face in a hand and put her other hand on Sara’s upper thigh, leaning forward to press a light kiss to Sara’s mouth. Sara didn’t put much effort into kissing back.

“Too tired to be good for me?” Alex asked. Sara nodded, head heavy. Alex smiled at her. “Okay. I’ll make it easy for you. I’ll take care of you. C’mere.” She held open her arms and Sara leaned into them, and Alex resituated her so her back was against the headboard instead of the wall. Sara let herself be moved easily.

Alex caught Sara’s eyes so she knew she was listening, then asked, “I’m gonna get some rope, okay?” She saw a spark in Sara’s eyes, because she always liked that, and Sara nodded. Alex climbed off the bed and walked across the room to her closet, where she kept most of that stuff. She grabbed the long soft ropes, with the gentle cuffs attached at the end.

Walking back over to Sara, she unraveled the ropes and tied the ends to the discreet loops on the posts of the headboard. Sara offered up her wrists before Alex could ask for them. She really did like this. Alex cuffed her as gently as she could, kissing the palm of each hand when she was done. She rested Sara’s arms on the bed and helped her climb under the blankets.

“Have you eaten at all today?” she asked, kneeling on the bed beside Sara. Sara shook her head, looking a little ashamed. Alternately, Alex was a little proud, because Sara was already nonverbal. It usually took more than this to get her to that point. “I’m going to get you some dinner, okay?” Alex asked. Sara nodded again, and Alex pressed a kiss to her forehead before she left. She padded out of the room and down the stairs.

In the kitchen, Alex grabbed a tray from one of the cabinets while she heated up the leftovers of her dinner. She got Sara a glass of the mixed fruit sparkling water, too, and put everything on a tray. She stopped into the living room for half a second to grab the proposal she’d been working on, just in case Sara fell asleep during their scene. She did that sometimes.

Walking carefully back up the stairs, Alex kicked the door to her room closed behind her. Sara looked up, and smiled a little bit when she saw Alex. “You brought me dinner,” she said.

Alex set the tray over Sara’s lap. “Of course I brought you dinner,” she said. “If you haven’t eaten, I’m going to feed you.” Alex sat cross legged in front of Sara, and grabbed her proposal to work on while Sara ate. Sara dug in, because Alex was an amazing cook and she knew she was an amazing cook, and she knew what Sara liked.

She flipped the proposal open to the page she left off on, pulling out the stack of papers, pencil, and calculator from between the pages. She didn’t want to spread out and actually get into it, but she could distractedly check a few clauses and numbers while Sara ate. Whoever wrote this had known what they were talking about, and most of the math was correct. Some of the ideas were a little… atypical, but a while ago, all space travel had been atypical. Extraordinary ideas led to extraordinary events.

The soft clinking of silverware on a plate was Alex’s background music as Alex worked through a problem that took up most of a page. It wasn’t that complicated, for Alex, but if you didn’t know what you were looking at, it would look like another language. There were a lot of brackets and letters put together, which, after a while, gave Alex a headache. Not yet, though.

She heard Sara clear her throat softly, and looked up. Sara’s face and neck were flushed, and her hands were tucked in her lap under the tray.

“What is it?” Alex asked. She set her pencil down and pushed her proposal to the side. Sara would always be her first priority.

“I, uh,” Sara blushed a little harder. “I can’t reach my drink.”

“And?” Alex asked, a only a little bit meanly. “Why didn’t you just pull the tray closer?”

Sara was as red as a tomato at this point. It was adorable. She mumbled that sounded like an answer, but Alex’s couldn’t understand her.

“What was that?” Alex asked, leaning forward and cupping her hand behind her ear, as if that would help her hear better. “C’mon, you can tell me,” she urged with an indulgent smile.

“I’m not allowed to,” Sara said a little louder. She ducked her head and covered her face with her hands. “Please?” she murmured through her fingers.

Alex smiled and licked her bottom lip. “Good girl,” she said. She grabbed Sara’s water for her and passed it to her, whispering, “Here you go.”

Sara flushed one more time and took it with a thank you. After she finished drinking, she handed it back to Alex to set on the edge of the tray, because that was where it went. She had to ask Alex whenever she wanted a drink. The ropes were long, but they weren’t that long.

Sara finished eating, only asking Alex for her drink a couple more times and blushing less and less each time, and Alex finished two pages of her proposal. When Sara was finished eating, Alex folded up all of her things for her proposal and set them on her nightstand, and collected up Sara’s tray and set in near the bookshelf to clean up later.

She could feel Sara watching her as she dipped back into the closet to grab a shorter rope. This one didn’t have cuffs on it, and it was made of a softer blue nylon. She grabbed another rope, this one connected in the middle and split at the ends, so it made a sort of X. She swung it over her shoulder and closed the closet door behind her when she went back out to the bed.

Sara complacently let herself be untied and re-tied, this time with her hands in front of her. Alex looped the blue rope around her wrists a couple times and tied it in a simple knot that Sara wouldn’t be able to undo. Sara tested it, and preened up at Alex when it held.

Alex signaled her intention to climb up on the bed, second rope still over her shoulder, and Sara leaned forward, so Alex could sit behind her. Alex did, and Sara leaned back against her chest like it was the only thing she ever wanted to do. Alex pulled the second rope off of her shoulder, this one purple and twisted, but soft. She pushed the blanket down past Sara’s thighs.

Sara made a startled noise when Alex lifted her thigh with a hand. She had probably had her eyes closed. Nevertheless, Sara let Alex manhandle the purple rope around her thigh and tie a knot on the outside. When Alex was finished, she dropped Sara’s thigh back to the bed and grabbed the other one, repeating her actions. When she set Sara’s thigh back down, Sara tested these ropes, too, and Alex could tell that she was pleased that they held.

Next Alex tied the dangling ends of the rope around Sara’s wrist to the piece of rope connecting her thighs, so she couldn’t move her hands that much. Sara’s face was turned against Alex’s shoulder, her breath rather heavy for how early it was. Alex could feel her eyelashes flutter, even through her t-shirt. Securing an arm around Sara’s waist to ensure she wouldn’t go anywhere, Alex leaned over to her nightstand and grabbed a pack of minty gum from the drawer, a little bit because Sara had just eaten and a little bit because she knew Sara didn’t like mint gum.

Sara opened her mouth anyway, because she was well behaved. Alex fed her the gum and crumpled up the wrapper, tossing it on the nightstand. Sara wasn’t chewing the gum. She probably didn’t know if she was allowed to.

Alex nudged Sara’s jaw with a wrist, and Sara started chewing. Alex grabbed her proposal from the nightstand, but before she could even settle it on Sara’ lap, Sara whined.

“Don’t do that,” she said. “No more working. James texted me earlier and told me that you’ve been working too much. He told me you didn’t even notice he left and not to let you work anymore.” Alex gave her a look, and Sara just shrugged, snuggling into Alex.

“Fine,” Alex said. She leaned over again and grabbed her laptop from the shelf below her nightstand. “We can watch Netflix, then. What do you want to watch?” She flipped it open and turned it on and unlocked it, and pulled up her browser. Sara had a profile on her account, so Alex went to that one. Sara bit softly at the skin of her arm until she chose  _ A Series of Unfortunate Events _ .

Sara was quiet during the show, letting Alex curl around her protectively. Alex didn’t really care for the show, but Sara liked it, so she put up with it. Instead, she distracted herself by kissing up and down along the column of Sara’s neck, and trying to distract her, too. She was gentle and methodical, a thing that always put Sara under.

She could see Sara’s hand curling and uncurling into fists as the show went on, and the laptop was getting warmer on their shins. Her eyes were fluttering every couple of seconds, and Alex knew she wasn’t going to last much longer.

About halfway through, Sara jerked her hand like she forgot they were tied. She bumped her head back against Alex’s chest and Alex paused the show for her. “What?” she asked, voice low, and it sounded more teasing than questioning. Sara groaned.

“You’re so mean to me,” she said, chewing the gum a few more times. Alex knew it would be getting spicy now, and that was the part Sara hated. She didn’t like any kind of spice. Sara also knew she wasn’t allowed to spit it out until Alex said so.

“Yeah,” Alex agreed sarcastically. She nipped Sara on the neck, harder than the rest. Sara repressed a yelp. “So mean.” Her thighs were tight around Sara.

Sara moaned quietly, and Alex really wished she wasn’t so tired. She didn’t want to wear Sara out until she had the energy to be worn out. But she had been so tired when she had come in, and Alex just wanted to take care of her like she needed. And right now, Sara needed rest.

Sara whined and squirmed between Alex’s legs like she wanted to do something about it, but it wasn’t like Alex was going to. She tucked her arms around Sara and held her close so she would calm down and stop moving around so much. It took a couple seconds, but Sara relented, and she curled so she could tuck her face against Alex’s neck.

“Don’t you dare bite,” Alex said. “I have to go into work day after tomorrow, and I cannot go in with a hickey.”

“But you can give me one?” Sara grumbled, almost-nipping playfully. “You’re lucky it’s cold out, because I’m gonna have to wear a turtleneck tomorrow.”

“Hey,” Alex warned. “I said I was going to make it easy for you. That doesn’t mean you get to misbehave.” She pinched Sara’s hip, and Sara tucked her head under Alex’s chin docily.

“Yes, sir,” she muttered sarcastically, but Alex thought it was funny so she didn’t do anything about it. Instead, she wrapped her arms back around Sara and held her close.


End file.
